Anti-Semitic Crime Surges, Worrying French Jews

By SUZANNE DALEY

Published: February 26, 2002

GARGES-LÈS-GONESSE, France — Shalom Temim, who lives in this modern, soulless-looking suburb of Paris where the government has built row upon row of subsidized high-rises, knows that he is the only Jew in his housing block on the Rue Delorme.

So, he does not doubt that the graffiti spray-painted in his stairwell — "Vive Hezbollah" and "Dirty Jew" — are directed at him. Nor is it the only sign of the hostility that surrounds him in this predominately Arab neighborhood. Six months ago a rock came crashing through his living-room window, and after it a smoky firecracker.

On a recent morning, fresh spit was visible on his front door.

"I have lived here for 32 years," Mr. Temim said with a sigh. "All this is new. It was never like this before. And it seems like the public authorities are downplaying everything, which is of course very worrying." He is not alone in feeling this way.

For nearly a decade, anti-Semitic violence had become fairly rare. But for over a year, France has witnessed a wave of attacks on Jews.

Increasingly, Jewish leaders are speaking out, challenging government statistics that they say minimize the problem and criticizing public officials who they say fail to denounce the mounting threats, insults and assaults directed at French Jews.

Part of the current problem, they say, is that the attacks are no longer coming just from skinheads and other supporters of the far right as in the past. These days the assailants are often Arabs, who occupy the lowest echelons of this society. The increase in incidents has corresponded to the deteriorating situation in the Middle East.

Most often the attacks occur in Paris suburbs like this one, where poor and working-class Jews and Muslims live side by side in bleak housing projects.

"Today's incidents are linked to some very real social problems in France, where many Arabs who are having a hard time or who are frustrated with what is going on in Palestine are taking it out on Jews," said Dr. Shimon Samuels, the co-author of a recent report on the issue for the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Paris.

"The fact that the government is not willing to acknowledge this is very a big problem," he said. "People are scared."

The Jewish leaders see a political component in the lack of outcry over the new wave of violence against Jews. More than five million Muslims — many of them from Algeria or other former French colonies in north Africa — live in France today, but only 600,000 Jews.

"It is clear that the Muslim community is more taken into account," the chief rabbi of France, Joseph Sitruk, said in a recent interview.

But some Muslim leaders suggest that the extent of the problem may be exaggerated, and they worry that too much publicity about it will only incite more trouble.

"I hear all this talk," said Said Kamli, the director of the mosque in Amiens, a town north of Paris with large Arab and Jewish populations. "But I do not feel this all around me. If there are really big numbers, then of course we must sound the bell of alarm. But my fear is that the problem will grow bigger if there is too much talk about it. The kids will start hearing that kids in another town are doing these things and they'll start doing it too."

In a lengthy article on the subject in Le Monde, many young Arabs in the Paris suburbs dismissed notions that they would attack local Jewish institutions because of their feelings about the Middle East. But several of the youths quoted did complain about what they saw as preferential treatment of Jews in French society.

One youth said synagogues were visible, stand-alone buildings, while the mosques were typically hidden away in basement suites.

"The Jews," said another, "are always the victims, and it is always the Arabs who are always getting pushed around, over there and here." So far there have not been any deaths in anti-Semitic attacks in France.

The French government has acknowledged a sharp increase in anti- Semitic incidents since September 2000, when fighting between Israelis and Palestinians intensified.

One government report says acts of violence against Jews have increased from one in 1998 to nine in 1999 to 116 in 2000, the most recent figure available. Other anti-Semitic incidents, ranging from threats to arson, went from 74 in 1998 and 60 in 1999 to 603 in 2000.

But some Jewish groups say that even those numbers fall far short of the actual situation, with many Jews afraid to report incidents and some officials quick to classify attacks as ordinary misbehavior by young toughs.

What seems indisputable is that news that a synagogue has been firebombed or that stones have been thrown at Jewish schools has become commonplace.

In Garges-lès-Gonesse the distinctive blue schoolbus that takes children to a Jewish school in nearby Aubervilliers has been attacked three times in the last 14 months, when there were dozens of young children aboard.

The first time, a knife was thrown through an open window, the bus driver said. The second time, three men used their car to block the bus from moving. Then one man smashed a window with a tire iron while another menaced the driver with a gun, telling him he was not in Tel Aviv. Recently rocks were hurled at the windows, smashing one of them.

"I keep trying to tell the kids it's nothing," said the bus driver, Saadoun Hanoufa. "But of course they are scared. No one wants to live like this."